Even though this
game continues from the previous King's Bounty title, both
newcomers and fans of the original will have no problem in
jumping straight into the title. For older fans, they can up the
difficulty and for those new to the series, they can start on a
lower difficulty in order to master the world of the beautiful
princess Amelie.

In King's bounty: Armored Princess,
players control the buxom heroine, Princess Amelie who has been
called to arms in order to eradicate the demons from Endoria. Her job is
simple (yeah right), travel to an alternate universe to find a
legendary knight and recover 8 stones to save her world
before it is overrun by these evil demons. It's clichéd... sure
but the characterisation is quite endearing and needless to say,
Amelia has become a favourite RPG character of mine... apart
from her looks or clothes sense.

In terms of
gameplay, it is quite reminiscent of games such as Heroes of
Might Magic which features a turn-based RPG system that has
been neatly divided into a set number of environments for you
to explore. Like all good RPG titles, before commencing, you
need to select the character class of Amelia which include a
set number of generic archetypes such as my favourite, the
Paladin or the Mage. Another cool aspect of the game is that the
exploration is done in real-time as opposed to turn based
manoeuvres which makes the game a damn fun gaming experience.

As you
progress, your statistics increase as do the abilities of who
and what you can hire because the ideal is to create a small
powerful army in order to retrieve these stones. As the world
of this current instalment of King's Bounty has been divided
into different environments, this ensures that the difficulty
is quite steady in the game as opposed to being thrown into the
deep end straight away. Of course, by upping the difficulty, the
game does become quite difficult at times but thankfully in a
challenging way as opposed to the player smashing the game with
an axe in sheer frustration!

Exploring plays
a huge role in this game and the developers have ensured that
there are quite a few "hidden" bonuses or Easter eggs littered throughout the gaming environment such as chests filled with god
or magical items. This also adds to the replay value. Like all RPG titles, Armored Princess
contains a healthy amount of sub quests that gives the player a
break from the main storyline and offers more chances of
funding items, points and new recruits to find. It's definitely
a good day to be a princess.

As you either
cut or magic your way through the various levels, you will be awarded points which can then be used to
level-up Amelie and the skill tree is relatively quite straight
forward as opposed to Eastern RPG titles. In its essence,
it's
quite similar to Dungeons & Dragons and similar ported
PC games so fans of Western RPG
titles will have no problems in navigating neither the menu
system nor the skill tree.

Apart from relying on your hire
thugs or heroes to assist you on the quest, you even have
access to pet dragon who can really change the tide of war and
best of all, as you level up, it also levels up as well.
Enemies are quite diverse in the game from stock standard
enemies such as Pirates to more powerful creatures such as
dragons or demons which sometimes do hand your collective butt
back to you. It's all part of the challenge though!

Graphically,
Armored Princess is a little dated on the PC and given that
this was released overseas last year, it is not as slick as
some of the current instalments. Even so, the game has this
cartoon atmosphere to it that does suit the premise quite well
with its detailed and well animated models and good special
effects. There were a few graphical glitches but generally,
what game isn't but overall, it worked quite well and some of
the environments looked gorgeous. The audio is good as if the
RPG inspired soundtrack that would not look out of place from a
Sword & Sorcery film such as The Lord of the Rings. Add
spells, swords and screams of battle and it comes together
rather well.

In conclusion, King's Bounty: Armored Princess, especially for
its current price is a very good game and will give you hours
upon hours of enjoyment. Best of all, this game can be played a
second time around by selecting another character class or
exploring one of the many alternative routes in the game. If
you're a fan of RPG titles and strategy is not for you, the
engine works quite well and even though it is turned based
for combat, it
does allow for some more in-depth combat as opposed to a mouse
smasher RPG.